this is josh g

Somehow, website UGO.com, which describes itself as "the ultimate online entertainment playground for people with “Gamer DNA,” has lined up a huge roster of celebrities to answer this question: who would win in a fight between a minotaur with a trident and a centaur with a crossbow?

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Not to mention the comments section from the metafilter post that I got this from has a good ongoing debate about the question…people quoting D&D rules, methods of re-loading crossbows, etc.

O.k., this is officially described as:

"Twin Solid State Musical Tesla coils playing Mario Bros theme song at the 2007 Lightning on the Lawn Teslathon sponsored by DC Cox (Resonance Research Corp) in Baraboo WI."

Nice. What you need to know is that the music is actually somehow generated by the sounds of the sparks themselves, and not through any kind of speaker. More info:

The Tesla coils stand 7 feet tall and are each capable of putting out over 12 foot of spark. They are spaced about 18 feet apart. The coils are controlled over a fiber optic link by a single laptop computer. Each coil is assigned to a midi channel which it responds to by playing notes that are programed into the computer software. These coils were constructed by Steve Ward and Jeff Larson. Video was captured by Terry Blake. What is not obvious is how loud the coils are. They are well over 110dB.

As someone in the youtube comments section put so eloquently, amazing work, nerds.

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more pop? well o.k. sure, maybe it’s a little bubblegummy, but this stuff from Robyn is so fun…I know the blog-o-world has been geeking out over Robyn for a while, but I only saw the video for Konichiwa Bitches a month or so ago, and it blew me away with its weird acid-fried scandanavian pop hip hop energy…

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and then I caught this video today for With Every Heartbeat while searching for music to use in a mainstream-advertisers type video piece…she’s like some weird version of madonna from an alternate universe!

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I was worried that the dolphin stuff below was a little too cute, so thank the internet gods I’ve been rescued by a truly brutal Ernie and Bert music video.

The song is called “A Divine Proclamation for Finishing the Present Existence” and it’s performed by the band Last Days of Humanity. I love how Ernie & Bert still retain their central muppet-ness despite the shift in tone…and the ending is great. Crank it up!

O.k., it’s (finally) time to post about dolphins.

First, this great BBC story about a dolphin saving a couple of beached whales. My favorite line:

"I don’t speak whale and I don’t speak dolphin," Mr Smith told the BBC, "but there was obviously something that went on because the two whales changed their attitude from being quite distressed to following the dolphin quite willingly and directly along the beach and straight out to sea."

Also, some dolphins have been blowing bubble rings and then swimming through them and playing with them. According to the youtube info, this behavior "is a phenomenon that has intrigued scientists watching dolphins in the wild and now is fascinating millions of guests at SeaWorld Orlando."

Dolphins just seem smart, don’t they?

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There’s a nice article in the WSJ about how there might be a part of the brain that triggers an opioid hit when we are given new information that we need to absorb and interpret. That in the past we would need to gather this type of information in order to survive, so we’ve evolved to feel good when we get it, much like eating lots of fats and carbs. 

In today’s info-saturated world though (like our food-saturated world), we are able to get so much information that it’s a bit like the monkey pushing the pleasure-stimulating lever until it dies (although this oft-cited experiment might be fake?). This accounts for why it’s so fun to cruise the web for info, to read blogs, to forward links, to post to blogs.

From the article:

this is amazing to me:

"Meanwhile, more than nine million people still pay $10 to $25 for AOL’s dial-up service when faster broadband service is available in most parts of the country, often at comparable prices. Dial-up is a rapidly declining business, but it is not an insignificant one. After all, it accounted for most of AOL’s $5.2 billion in revenue last year."

it’s from an NYT article on slow tech adopters…

Normally I would hate this kind of sugar-y sweet pop nonsense, but something about de-contextualizing it and putting it in the frame of busking makes it work for me. Big time. Roisin Murphy performing "You Know Me Better" on the streets for BBC2 Culture Show’s Busking Challenge. (There’s another Busking Challenge clip floating around of Frank Black beginning to play in Ireland and the cops shutting it down, but it’s kind of frustrating).

Somehow watching it like this, I love the song. It feels like some really dedicated music-types worked and worked to get this slick sound, and dance moves (does she do the robot at one point?!) and couldn’t get signed so they took it to the streets of London. It’s in such a real world, so far removed from the glitz of music videos or photo shoots. People’s phones ring, there’s some kind of clattering cart that goes by in the beginning (it makes Roisin smile)…I love it. And I know if I heard this song in a bar or a club it would make me feel sick.

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is that this happens at 7am instead of 6am.

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the song is so-so, but the vid is simple and great.

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several times during this video art piece by artist Paul Slocum I thought I was losing my mind. Enjoy "You’re Not My Father."

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(via)

The Believer has a really cool article with Errol Morris (his new film is about Abu Ghraib!) and Werner Herzog interviewing each other. These guys are titans of doc, and they are so imaginative and smart, it’s a blast to read them (I found the article via). I really like this part: 

(also the illustration at the top of the article is by Maakies’ Tony Millionaire! Blog-chronicity!)

In the article, Herzog and Morris are talking like they’ve known each other for ages, because they have. From imdb:

Herzog once promised to eat his shoe if a young American film student went out and actually made the film he was always only talking about. The young student was Errol Morris , who met the challenge with his off-beat 1978 pet cemetery documentary Gates of Heaven. Herzog makes good on his promise in the short doc Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe.

Apparently after that, Morris sees Herzog’s move as grandstanding or something and it becomes this 30-year-long feud.

Herzog Eats His Shoe is one of those short films that I heard about in film class at college and sort of figured, well I’ll never get to see that because short docs never screen anywhere. But now thanks to the magic of google video, it’s available right here! It’s 20 minutes long, and you could watch it right now!

The film is really really good, and Herzog is incredibly inspiring. I love the bit in there where he’s talking about making the film "Even Dwarves Started Small":

"One little guy caught fire when we watered the plants with gasoline and so I extinguished him with my body, I threw myself on him, and when he was extinguished I told him ‘I’m going to throw myself on a cactus if you all survive.’"

So he did it and there’s still cactus needles sticking in his knee! Also there’s that great bit recently where Herzog got shot by an air rifle while doing an interview and said "it’s not a significant bullet." What a badass.

What the heck is this going to sound like? It’s a mix done by Dr. Dre from back in 1987:

"Dr Dre mixtape from 1987 (which was exclusively sold at The Roadium Swap Meet) that mixes over 300 bits and pieces of songs into a 60 minute mega mix. With a little assistance from Sir Jinx (who at the time was Ice Cube’s partner in the rap group C.I.A.) Dre delivers a classic. Listening to the mix, "Boyz In Da Hood" had already been recorded so this period represents the beginning of NWA."

(via DJSoulNYC)

Dr. Dre 1987 mix Side A

Dr. Dre 1987 mix Side B

Damn that sounds solid! I mean, the man was obviously a solid DJ. I don’t think I’ll listen to it too much, but that was fun.

 American Gangster – B

I just saw this again for the second time and I liked it a lot better this time. I think the first time I saw it I had just watched Crowe, Denzel and Ridley Scott on Charlie Rose and they were so freaking serious and full of themselves about how hard-core and amazing this film was. And then I saw the film and was like "ho hum, o.k." And yeah, it’s solidly done, entertaining from a cop/villain standpoint, fun to see how Denzel rises and Crowe brings him down. Not to mention the actor-of-the-moment Josh Brolin as an evil thug cop…

And a lot of the CRIME = CAPITALISM stuff was kind of hitting me over the head, and I wanted to scream "I get it!" when Denzel’s boss/father figure is telling him about cutting out the middle man, and so on. Denzel is badass as usual, but it came across a little like Scarface lite. And even Scarface wasn’t as good as it thought it was, you know?

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Did I ever tell you about the best meal I ever had?

I’m reminded of this meal because I came across this article…

Matt D and I were heading off to Chicago for TLC to do a ridiculously expensive shoot with a production company there. Everything was pretty well set as far as the shoot, hotel, etc., but I wanted to try and find somewhere great to go eat. TLC would give us a per diem for food, and on shoot days the set would be catered, so breakfast and lunch would be provided for and you could blow the whole per diem on dinner. Both Matt and I would have $100, so we would start with $200 between us. Then if we each put up $60-$70 we’d be on our way to an exemplary meal.

I asked my friend Zanna, who is definitely a gourmand (reads cookbooks for fun, stays up to date on the cool places to eat in major cities) if she could recommend somewhere in Chicago. She says Charlie Trotter’s. It’s wednesday, and the shoot is Friday, so the likelihood of getting a reservation is slim, but I decide to call anyway and see if there were any cancellations. For some reason I feel like I might have better luck if I call and ask in this super deep bass voice that annunciates…every…word…like…this… Turns out they’ve had a cancellation and we get a table for two.

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